Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Send in the clowns

So, I was reading an article in one of my health magazines about how there was this study done on women who had went through the In Vitro Fertilization process and it was found that the number of processes which were a success were greatly increased if the women who were in recovery were visited by clowns. And I immediately decided that there were several things wrong with this.

First off: WHAT? Secondly: how on earth did this actually get published? And, thirdly: how do results like this actually come about? Like, how does one decide that In Vitro Fertilization has a better success rate if clowns are introduced into the equation. Who actually came up with that idea?

Was it someone who just said one day, "So I've noticed the odds of these women actually having kids is really low what should we do? Hey, I know! CLOWNS!" Or was it a logic thing where a room full of women got a visit from clowns for some reason and all of them ended up having kids as opposed to a room full of women who just got flowers and someone decided that the clowns were the determining factor? Or was it more trial and error where someone was like, "How did the monkeys do? No? Ok, what about the puppies? Nope. Ok, what about the group of clowns? Yes?! BINGO!"

And then I got to thinking that no matter how the idea came about, someone or ones had to actually spend money doing this study. They had to actually spend money to see if having clowns in a room while a woman was recovering made a difference in the success rate. They spent the money studying CLOWNS rather than, oh I don't know, spending the money on actual research towards studying the process itself or maybe the female body to try to see if there is a physical or possibly more scientific reason why some processes stick and others don't. Maybe slightly more scientific than clowns.

And then I thought, does the number of clowns in the room directly correspond to the number of babies the women has? Like, if there were two clowns would the women have twins? And what about those clown cars? You know, the ones where the clowns just keep coming out and you don't know how that many clowns got in there because it seems as if it never ends? What if a clown car drove in there?! WHAT IF THAT HAPPENED?!

And then I decided that I was just going to steer clear of all clowns from now on just in case.